Tendency to anthropomorphise his hardware

Babbage has a tendency to anthropomorphise his hardware, as when he shed tears afterwards shutting down faithful servers in 2010. As the owner of dozens of physical bits of kit over 30 years, from desktops to mobiles to servers, he has always ascribed a personality to each, although rarely a name. Computers are ornery beasts, as many readers will no doubt concur. This one likes to lock up and require the power cord be pulled to effect a restart. That one continually corrupts a preference file for only one software package, like a nasty boy scribbling on his desk when no one is looking. A desktop of recent vintage decided vociferously that it would not accept the installation of Apple's latest operating system update, Lion, in spite of many hours of arguments over several days, even enlisting help from its maker. A coddled few seem to provide their owner comfort. They receive praise-and glossy cases as a reward.

In the latest round of transplants Babbage opted to wipe the sins of past installations clean. The Lion-rejecting tower, an oversize portable and Mrs Babbage's failing laptop were replaced by new models each boasting a factory-installed copy of Apple's new beast. For Mrs Babbage and himself, he used Apple's Migration Assistant, a tool that in previous years was abjured because of its abject failure to assist in migration, although it excelled at assisting migraines by causing Babbage's head to throb. Apple has improved it quite a bit, and it worked flawlessly in replicating accounts files and applications without dislodging the fresh system it interacted with. The Lion rejecter had already shown its ability to transubstantiate across reinstallations, and Babbage copied more gingerly to avoid bringing along whatever foul spirit had possessed his tower. It seems to have worked, for the moment so far.

Migration should ultimately disappear and be replaced with a combination of synchronisation, whether from one's own hosted data stores in a company or home, or via cloud-based services, just as those operated by Apple and Google. Both firms' mobile platforms differ in that Apple likes to sync media from computers on a home or office network whereas Google prefers streaming on demand.

In such a scenario, the operating system remains "thick"-in other words, it is rich and fully capable whether on the desktop or a smartphone opposite to the past notion of stupid, "thin" customers that leaned largely on operations performed on servers to carry out tasks.

New computer for temporary use

Babbage sees this when he sets up a new computer for temporary use, as when he has one on loan. Log into Apple's iCloud service, and contacts, calendars, photos and his music collection appear. Install a small Dropbox software agent and enter credentials, and gigabytes of personal and shared files download in minutes over a fast connection, including encrypted stores of passwords and keyboard macros settings. Another few clicks, and your correspondent's CrashPlan backup account is linked in for internet-hosted archives.

Some will reject the final transmigration of the computer's spirit to the cloud. They will voice valid concerns about eternal access to the unequalled files that make up the computing experience and the privacy and security associated with putting personal and professional data in the hands of others. And maybe local clouds, stored on one's own networks and secured with one's own methods, will be seeded and grow. However the soul of a machine seems relentlessly to be ascending to the cloud-even during its physical embodiment remains as pernickety as ever.

In this blog, our correspondents report on the intersections between science, research, culture and policy. The blog takes its name from Charles Babbage, a Victorian mathematician and engineer who designed a mechanical computer. Follow Babbage on Twitter »